


Touch

by airamcg



Category: Avatar: Legend of Korra, Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Between Seasons/Series, Canon Disabled Character, Family, Gen, Mother-Daughter Relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-07-02
Updated: 2012-07-02
Packaged: 2017-11-09 00:51:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 305
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/449420
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/airamcg/pseuds/airamcg
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>Love need not be spoken so often when you are shown through that which cannot be seen. -- Mother has a tactile love.</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	Touch

Mother had a tactile love. 

Whenever I think of her, I think of her hands. They say her palms felt like komodo rhino hide; rough and calloused from all her years of Earthbending. I never noticed that whenever she cupped my cheeks, her thumbs tracing over my mouth, nose, and eyes. Every so often, she would press her lips on my forehead and wrap me in her warmth.

In my childhood, she always held me in her sleep. One arm a pillow to my head, the other a blanket of protection. She never failed to put one hand flat on the stone floor, a habit she picked up in her youthful adventures. She told me it was her way to be sure. Of what, I never found out until I was older.

In my youth, we spent our weekends in badgermole tunnels. Immersed in the pitch black, she taught me how to see everything with a footstep. She never let go of my hand until she was sure I could find the way on my own. Through her guidance, I learned the language of the badgermoles— of silence and senses, of earth and touch.

Every now and then, I press my ear against an earthen surface and wish I could hear the song of her heartbeat reverberating once more. We were tectonic plates that clashed, shifted, and drifted apart. And yet we still managed to mold our little world, bound together as mother and daughter with a love that burned beneath the bedrock.

What Mother did not have, is a spoken love. 

But then love need not be spoken so often when you are shown through that which cannot be seen, only felt. 

* * * * *

_“It is only with the heart that one can see rightly. What is essential is invisible to the eye.”_  
\--Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

**Author's Note:**

> I've always imagined Toph would be a protective mother in a doting kind of way, though I'm not sure if I expressed that properly in this story.


End file.
